Millions of men have lived to fight, build palaces and boundaries, shape destinies and societies; but the compelling force of all times has been the force of originality and creation profoundly affecting the roots of human spirit. (Ansel Adams)

Thought allied fearlessly to purpose becomes creative force. He who knows this is ready to become something higher and stronger than a bundle of wavering thoughts and fluctuating sensations. He who does this has become the conscious and intelligent wielder of his mental powers. (James Allen)

Creativity depends on a number of things: experience, including knowledge and technical skills; talent; an ability to think in new ways; and the capacity to push through uncreative dry spells. (Teresa Amabile)

After one month with a saxophone shoved in my mouth, my military combatant's enthusiasm disappeared completely. Instead of flying choppers behind enemy lines, I started to fantasise about living in New York, London or Paris. (Gilad Atzmon)

The creative process is a cocktail of instinct, skill, culture and a highly creative feverishness. It is not like a drug; it is a particular state when everything happens very quickly, a mixture of consciousness and unconsciousness, of fear and pleasure; it's a little like making love, the physical act of love. (Francis Bacon)

I change many things, discard others, and try again and again until I am satisfied. Then, in my head, I begin to elaborate the work in its breadth, its narrowness, its height, its depth... I hear and see the image in front of me from every angle, as if it had been cast, and only the labour of writing it down remains. (Ludwig van Beethoven)

Art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship. It severed an umbilical cord and now lives its own sterile life, generating and degenerating itself. In former days the artist remained unknown and his work was to the glory of God. (Ingmar Bergman)

The creative effort is a lot like sex. It's not so much the equipment you have as what is in your mind. The real excitement and beauty is in what we think and feel and what we do about it. (Kelly Borsheim)

...these words were just streaming out and there were tears running down my face. But I couldn't stop, they just flew out. It's an odd feeling, like something else is guiding you, although forcing your hand is more like it. (David Bowie)

Straight-away the ideas flow in upon me, directly from God, and not only do I see distinct themes in my mind's eye, but they are clothed in the right forms, harmonies, and orchestration. (Johannes Brahms)

My movie is born first in my head, dies on paper; is resuscitated by the living persons and real objects I use, which are killed on film but, placed in a certain order and projected on to a screen, come to life again like flowers in water. (Robert Bresson)

Creation happens to us, burns into us, changes us, we tremble and swoon, we submit. Creation - we participate in it, we encounter the creator, offer ourselves to him, helpers and companions. (Martin Buber)

The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To them... a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. (Pearl S. Buck)

Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create - so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating. (Pearl S. Buck)

The human mind cannot create anything. It produces nothing until after having been fertilized by experience and meditation; its acquisitions are the gems of its production. (George-Louis Leclerc de Buffon)

The act of creation, making anything, is an alteration. We cannot eliminate the medium or ourselves from the process, and both are limited. We create decisive moments by devoting our time and attention to specific things. This is the greatest gift we can give anyone or anything - pieces of our life. (John Paul Caponigro)

I have always regarded manual labour as creative and looked with respect - and, yes, wonder - at people who work with their hands. It seems to me that their creativity is no less than that of a violinist or painter. (Pablo Casals)

We are like children building a sandcastle. We embellish it with beautiful shells, bits of driftwood, and pieces of coloured glass. The castle is ours, off limits to others. Yet despite all our attachment, we know that the tide will inevitably come in and sweep the sandcastle away. The trick is to enjoy it fully but without clinging, and when the time comes, let it dissolve back into the sea. (Pema Chodron)

There is something about the creative process... which is that you can't talk about it. You try to think of anecdotes about it, and you try to explain, but you're never really saying what happened... it's a sort of happy accident. (Betty Comden)

Creativity is essentially a lonely art. An even lonelier struggle. To some a blessing. To others a curse. It is in reality the ability to reach inside yourself and drag forth from your very soul an idea. (Lou Dorfsman)

Recent years have shown a growing preoccupation with the circumstances surrounding the creative act and a search for the ingredients that promote creativity. This preoccupation in itself suggests that we are in a special kind of trouble - and indeed we are. (Charles Eames)

Just as words have two functions - information and creation - so each human mind has two personalities, one on the surface, one deeper down. The upper personality... is conscious and alert... The lower personality is a... perfect fool, but without it there is no literature... (E. M. Forster)

Creativity sometimes needs the protection of darkness, of being ignored. That is very obvious in the natural tendency many artists and writers have not to show their paintings or writings before they are finished. (Marie-Louise von Franz)

When Alexander the Great visited Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for the famed teacher, Diogenes replied: 'Only stand out of my light.' Perhaps some day we shall know how to heighten creativity. Until then, one of the best things we can do for creative men and women is to stand out of their light. (John W. Gardner)

Creativity is not reliant on limiting access to media. Neither is the use of media, of new techniques just to 'see' what they can do as a form of art... Is the artist saying something we can hear... no matter what the language? (Cherie Hanson)

Creation is dominated by three absolutely different factors: First, nature, which works upon us by its laws; second, the artist, who creates a spiritual contact with nature and his materials; third, the medium of expression through which the artist translates his inner world. (Hans Hofmann)

-on The Group of Seven...A representative painting of a mountain is simply a copy of what is reflected on the eye's retina. A true painting of a mountain is a more or less imperfect record of what transpires in the soul of the person behind the retina. (F. B. Hoosier)

Creative activity is more than a mere cultural frill, it is a crucial factor of human experience, the means of self-revelation, the basis of empathy with others; it inspires both individualism and responsibility, the giving and the sharing of experience. (Tom Hudson)

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. (Steve Jobs)

The true work of art is born from the Artist: a mysterious, enigmatic, and mystical creation. It detaches itself from him, it acquires an autonomous life, becomes a personality, an independent subject, animated with a spiritual breath, the living subject of a real existence of being. (Wassily Kandinsky)

The creation of a work of art must of necessity, as a result of entering into the specific dimensions of pictorial art, be accompanied by distortion of the natural form. For, therein is nature reborn. (Paul Klee)

I remain detached and distant, but it is under my eyes and my orders that the work of art must create itself... Then, when the creation starts, I stand there, present at the ceremony, immaculate, calm, relaxed... ready to welcome the work of art that is coming into existence in the tangible world... (Yves Klein)

Creativity, as has been said, consists largely of rearranging what we know in order to find out what we do not know. Hence, to think creatively, we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted. (George Kneller)

Build Yourself Wings. Fly straight ahead. Walk a straight line. Visit. Leave a special sign on the door. Make a gift of words. Mark your path with books. With clothes. With food. Join two distant places. Two rocks. Two people. Bridge a river. Build a city of sand. Raise up a mound. (Milan Knizak)

We are asking a really fundamental question whether thought can ever be creative. If thought is not the ground of creation then what is creation? Is love the only factor that is creative? (Jiddu Krishnamurti)

The creative ability of an artist is manifested only if he succeeds in transforming the natural phenomena into 'another reality.' This part of the creative process as an independent element, if conscious and developed, hints at the possibility of creating a painting. (Frantisek Kupka)

The one thing that cannot be outsourced is creativity. We have to find ways to support creative people because the only way we are going to improve our laws... is by creating our way out of it. (Adam Leipzig)

Virtually any kind of creative activity lifts us out of the brutish existence and simple survival grind of making a living. The human mind wants to be creatively active. It is part of a fulfilling, dignified life, it is part of being human. (Ernst Lurker)

The creative process spurs a joyous leisure where you lose yourself to find yourself again. You don't distract yourself with creativity, you immerse yourself in it. You feel alive with your senses alert in a good way. (Debbie Mandel)

The process of creating is an attack on, and excavation of, the demons that intimidate and guard at the gates of the art that one seeks to attain, and how necessary is the fight to get through and pass them. (Jo Ann Martielli)

Now I really make the little idea from clay, and I hold it in my hand. I can turn it, look at it from underneath, see it from one view, hold it against the sky, imagine it any size I like, and really be in control, almost like God creating something. (Henry Moore)

It's impossible for a creative artist to be either a Puritan or a Fascist, because both are a negation of the creative urge. The only things a creative artist can be opposed to are ugliness and injustice. (Liam O'Flaherty)

- The War of Art...The part we create from can't be touched by anything our parents did, or society did. That part is unsullied, uncorrupted; soundproof, waterproof, and bulletproof. In fact, the more troubles we've got, the better and richer that part becomes. (Steven Pressfield)

There are people who are just plain supposed to be writing – or painting or sculpting or dancing or... This isn't optional, and often isn't even fun – it's as important as breathing. (Darylynn Starr Rank)

- Out Of the Picture: Milton Resnick and the New York School by Geoffrey Dorfman...You have to become complete in some way; a universe - a complete thing in
yourself - in order to reach across and breathe some unity onto this thing
you're faced with. If you intentionally avoid that unity that is within yourself then you will avoid unity in your work. (Milton Resnick)

- Out Of the Picture: Milton Resnick and the New York School by Geoffrey Dorfman...If there's no unity in your work, then you've deliberately made yourself into that kind of person. You don't want that unity in your work. You've made some kind of
satisfactory arrangement with your culture. (Milton Resnick)

Creativity is a god who comes around only when he pleases, and it isn't very often. But when he does come around, he sits at my desk and folds his wings and I offer him whatever he wants. (Gary D. Schmidt)

Creativity gives new forms, new patterns, new ideas, new art forms. And we don't know where creativity comes from. Is it inspired from above? Welling up from below? Picked up from the air? What? Creativity is a mystery wherever you encounter it... (Rupert Sheldrake)

If you told me to write a love song tonight, I'd have a lot of trouble. But if you tell me to write a love song about a girl with a red dress who goes into a bar and is on her fifth martini and is falling off her chair, that's a lot easier, and it makes me free to say anything I want. (Stephen Sondheim)

Like a researcher in his laboratory, I am the first spectator of the suggestions drawn from the materials. I unleash their expressive possibilities, even if I do not have a very clear idea of what I am going to do. As I go along with my work I formulate my thought, and from this struggle between what I want and the reality of the material - from this tension - is born an equilibrium. (Antoni Tapies)

True creativity flows only from stillness. When stillness becomes conscious, the spiritual dimension enters your life and you begin to be guided by an intelligence far greater than the human mind. (Eckhart Tolle)

The idea of beauty is the fundamental idea of everything. In the world we see only distortions of the fundamental idea, but art, by imagination, may lift itself to the height of this idea. Art is therefore akin to creation. (Leo Tolstoy)

Right mindfulness does not simply mean being aware; it is like creating a work of art. You can therefore trust what you are doing; you are not threatened by anything. You have room to dance in the space, and this makes it a creative situation. The space is open to you. (Chogyam Trungpa)

I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like child stringing beads in kindergarten - happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another. (Brenda Ueland)

The painter's mind is a copy of the divine mind, since it operates freely in creating the many kinds of animals, plants, fruits, landscapes, countrysides, ruins, and awe-inspiring places. (Leonardo da Vinci)

Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something. (Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.)

And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see - or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read. (Alice Walker)

When you're creating you have to descend to depths. You've just got to go there – to the boredom, the banality, the loneliness and all that. Those moments of really feeling in the flow are fleeting... (Errollyn Wallen)

- The Path to New Music...And the works that endure and will endure for ever, the great masterpieces, cannot have come into being as humanity... imagines. Man is only the vessel into which is poured what "nature in general" wants to express. (Anton Webern)

Creativity is the power to reject the past, to change the status quo, and to seek new potential. Simply put, aside from using one's imagination - perhaps more importantly - creativity is the power to act. (Ai Weiwei)

The creative force in man recognizes and records these rhythms with the medium most suitable to him... To see the Thing Itself is essential: the quintessence revealed direct without the fog of impressionism - the casual noting of the superficial phase, a transitory mood. (Edward Weston)

Create beauty. Give everything you have to creating. No matter what you have to do to get by each day, never stop creating. If it is an actual art form, you will likely master it. But if it is just how you live, you'll be very alive and far happier. (J. Bruce Wilcox)

To create a lively painting on a dead canvas is like hearing the unheard, feeling the unseen, painting the absence, moving the unmoveable, speaking to the silence and bringing it to a meaningful conversation. (Mona Youssef)